Blue Mountains

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Waking up very cold this morning was very strange... now I say really cold, obviously I know those of you reading in the UK are laughing your heads off, but for us being in less then 20 degrees of heat is odd, we haven’t known this kind of cold for months! I had to put a fleece on!

We had a leisurely breakfast then headed out to plan our 3 days in the Blue Mountains.
That sorted- I wont ruin the surprises to follow, we headed out on a tour bus of the area.

This is a tour bus with a difference; it was a double decker red London bus, a hop on hop off system around Katoomba and the various scenic points along the ridge of the mountains and the World Heritage listed national park.

Stopping first at ‘Scenic World’ a 3 way trip of seeing the mountains up close, well in actual fact being that there are more then a million hectares of mountains and protected land, we were only a tiny dot on the landscape. First we traveled by cable car across the valley to a lookout point on the other side, with an amazing glass floor that appeared in the middle of our suspension across the valley at 545 meters up. The views were amazing.

This was followed by walking through the forests on a raised walkway for about an hour in the shade of the trees. It was lovely to see the difference between the rain forests in the north we had visited and the ones here more south within the mountains, they appeared very differed, and the wild life obviously changed to, mainly the difference in birds.

To take us back to the top of the ride, we took a railway - this is not what it sounds - Originally this railway was used to transport miners to the pits below and so descends and ascends at an amazing vertical angle, apparently the steepest incline passenger railway in the world- it was better then a rollercoaster, there were no safety harnesses and accelerated at quite a speed, there were even some screams from the other passengers!

From here we jumped back on the red bus and on to some other look out points: Echo Point and the Three Sisters, these are rock formations at the edge of a ridge that are massive naturally formed monuments created through thousands of years of , so named after many years of story telling.

From here we jumped back on the red bus and on to some other look out points: Echo Point and the Three Sisters, these are rock formations at the edge of a ridge that are massive naturally formed monuments created through thousands of years of corrosion, so named after many years of story telling and legends.

We took a walk all the way to the first of the three sisters where a walk way had been created with the most steepest stairs ever created (in our view!) even though we are not scared of heights, it certainly could have tipped us over the edge- literally!

Again such beautiful scenery, we are now finally out of words or adjectives, so as the Australians would say, the views were awesome!

Continuing back on the bus, we then stopped at the Leura Cascades and Bridal Veil falls, for another walk and more views again which were breathtaking.

On to our last stop, ‘The Edge’ movie all about the Blue Mountains and its volatile habitat, shown on a screen that was 6 stories high, very interesting and really well shot.

The whole day had been great, beautiful and interesting all at once. So worth the money and would certainly recommend it, the best bit, we did it all at our own pace with no one chasing us on, like so many tour companies.

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